Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that, and Mr. McKeon raised correctly the fact that often the concern is about employment rights rather than status, but, of course, there is also an employer contribution in the case of an employment contract and a loss to the State as a result, so there is a separate issue.

May I turn to the PUP payments and overpayments? Mr. McKeon gave a good outline as to what is planned; what we did not necessarily get was a timeline for that. That would be useful.

Furthermore, there is the idea that at some point one makes a bad debt provision. Debts may be written off and so on, particularly for those people who do not have an ongoing relationship with the Department. There are, however, a considerable number of people here who may never make a social welfare claim in their working lifetime, who have a PUP overpayment and who engaged with the Department for the first time during the Covid pandemic but who will at some point have an old-age pension claim on their retirement. I think there would be an onus on the Department that if there is an overpayment, that is not presented to somebody at the age of 66, when their old-age pension is presented to them, but that there is an opportunity to repay. I appreciate that that involves people engaging as well, but I would have a particular concern that either we would write off those debts when there is an opportunity for people to repay over a long period, and I do not think that would be appropriate, or that it would be presented in some sort of lump sum at that point, which would not be an appropriate method either.